OFC Player Development Officer, Phillip Parker is currently in the Kingdom in his mission to have a look at Tonga’s grassroots environment and also to do some assessments about the needs of the coaching staff but also to reconnect his relationship with those in charge of the grassroots and youth football area.
Today in Loto-Tonga Home of Football, over 20 grassroots coaches from all the 21 grassroots communities joined a two hours workshop to introduce a range of different sorts of activities that can be used and put into the grassroots program across Tongatapu. The workshop came with an activity resource book from a project called the Football Player Development Centre and inside is all different sorts of activities manual booklet resources to assist grassroots coaches to be able to deliver activities that focus on players actions rather than the tactical understanding of playing the game.
“In the grassroots, we have a very strong belief and its backed up by lots of evidence and scientific reports to say that between the age of 8 and 12 years old the child’s brain is in its super absorbent stage of its life and this is where we target our grassroots activities and where we encourage our children to execute the action rather than think about the tactics of the game and this will lead to a long term player development relationship with the ball which then hopefully over time will lead the player to be able to think clearly under pressure during the game”. Parker to TFA Website
“What we need is for the young children that aspire to play for the national team at some point we should be able to categorise them and keep them grouped with similar like-minded children that can perform similar actions therefore increasing their competitiveness and intensity inside the training environment so that we can start to get them to execute these player actions under a lot of pressure and a game type pf situation and then hopefully coaches should be able to identify who can do what and where they can end up on”. Phillp Parker added.
Mr Parker also mentioned his gratitude and gratefulness to the Mount Albert Grammar School in Auckland New Zealand for showing their desire to support sports in the Pacific by donating the tops that the participants wore today. “I definitely would like to say thank you to the Mount Albert Grammar Sports Department and the parents that worked alongside the school to collect the shirts and the gifts and this is one box of a few boxes of things that will go across the Pacific to support sports development.”
Phillip will wrap up his visit tomorrow before he returns to Auckland, New Zealand where he is based.
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